THE CONFESSIONS OF JONATHAN FLITE
BY MATTHEW J. BEIER
Jonathan Flite was born in Rhode Island with memories he can’t explain. Seven sets of them, to be exact, all belonging to a group of teenagers who disappeared from Idle County, Minnesota, in 2010—ten years before his birth. Seventeen years of anxiety, refusal to admit he is lying, and one homicidal outburst have landed him at Crescent Rehabilitation Center, a seaside juvenile center for rich kids. Nobody has ever dared to believe his memories might be real.
Until now. Thomas Lumen, a psychiatrist with his own thirty-year connection to the cold case, arrives at Crescent just three months after a nuclear bomb levels Geneva, Switzerland—a crime the world is already linking to Victor Zobel, a celebrity atheist and billionaire whose stepdaughter was one of the seven teens who vanished in 2010. Lumen wants to know what Jonathan remembers.
Jonathan cautiously starts by sharing the story of Molly Butler, a grieving girl who spent one restless summer in 2004 hunting for ghosts with her neighbor, Jacob Jenkins. It should have stayed a kid’s game, but instead, it became a harrowing endeavor that led them to proof of the afterlife. Decades later, Jonathan’s story starts piecing together an even deeper truth: that something exists in Idle County’s notorious Moon Woods that shouldn’t—a related anomaly that reveals shocking truths about consciousness. It also seems the anomaly is worth killing seven teens—and bombing an entire city—to keep secret.
In helping to reopen the Idle County Seven case, Jonathan is no longer just a juvenile killer with an unbelievable story. He’s a target. And the closer he gets to the truth, the more everyone around him has to lose.
THE RELEASE OF JONATHAN FLITE
BY MATTHEW J. BEIER
Jonathan Flite is free, but it doesn’t feel like it. Released from Crescent Rehabilitation Center and still known as Rhode Island’s famous “nurse killer,” he now has an even wider target on his back. The FBI has quietly reopened the Idle County Seven cold case from 2010, and every “past-life memory” Jonathan shares about the vanished teens pulls investigators closer to the same man they already suspect orchestrated last year’s nuclear attack on Geneva, Switzerland: Victor Zobel, stepfather of one of the missing seven, and a billionaire atheist who’s spent his life preaching that death is the end of existence.
When Jonathan starts getting anonymous letters in blue envelopes urging him to tell the whole truth, the FBI expands their global investigation, revealing the extent of Victor Zobel’s reach—the same reach that once closed around Elijah Bryce, one of the teens who vanished in 2010. As Jonathan prepares to go public with his version of the story, events from the past converge with the present—including the story of how Molly Butler befriended Elijah during a summer of vicious bullying in 2005, and how their investigation into an unearthed human jawbone led to further hints about the mysterious mind-affecting anomaly buried under Idle County’s infamous Moon Woods.
Only Victor Zobel, who bought the Moon Woods after the teens’ disappearances, has access to the anomaly. Only Jonathan knows what Victor is covering up. And only the stranger sending Jonathan letters—a physicist with deep connections to the murdered teens—can prove that Jonathan has been telling the truth about his memories all along.
THE RELEASE OF JONATHAN FLITE
BY MATTHEW J. BEIER
Jonathan Flite’s fame is on the rise. Since the suicide bombing at his mother’s press conference last summer, Jonathan’s claims of having past-life memories—seven sets of them, each belonging to one of the vanished Idle County Seven—have made him equal parts prophet and pariah. Newsmagazine legend Alice Winterblume is now making Jonathan the centerpiece of WorldLine, her hit docuseries, and every episode pulls him deeper into a spotlight that religious extremists, scientists, and skeptics alike can’t look away from.
Overshadowing the situation is Victor Zobel, the billionaire atheist already suspected of orchestrating the 2037 nuclear attack in Geneva, Switzerland. The bombing killed a group of physicists gathered at CERN to discuss a radical new Theory of Everything, one that could finally prove what Zobel has spent his life and fortune denying: that consciousness doesn’t end when the body does. The paper’s author, an old friend of the Idle County Seven named Rebecca Sparks, wasn’t supposed to survive the attack either.
The connection to Jonathan becomes apparent when he publicly shares the story of Lindsay Thorsen, who had close family ties to Rebecca before vanishing in 2010 with the rest of the Idle County Seven. As police evidence from the past further corroborates Jonathan’s shocking claims—particularly one about Lindsay surviving an out-of-body experience during a harrowing abduction in 2006—the walls surrounding society’s deepest-held beliefs about the nature of life, death, and physical reality begin to crumble.
THE BREEDERS
BY MATTHEW J. BEIER
The storm has come.
The homosexuals, once an ostracized social minority, have taken over the world. They understood the dangers of an overpopulated planet, usurped government power, and created a culture of perfectly engineered families. But Grace Jarvis and Dex Wheelock are heterosexuals—part of the government’s highly controlled backup plan for reproduction—and they have a problem.
Grace is pregnant. Dex is the father. It is a crime that has only one consequence: banishment to the Antarctic Sanctuary, an isolated biological reserve where reproductive criminals are allowed to exist in peace, without disrupting the rest of civilization. Yet there are rumors that genocide has already begun and that the homosexuals are finally setting natural breeders on a path to extinction. This leaves Grace and Dex with only two choices: to succumb to the tyrannical regime, or run.
They choose to run.
This debut novel by LGBTQ+ author Matthew J. Beier tells the intimate story of two people bound by the force of life itself as they set out to protect their unborn child and find value for themselves in a world that has rendered them worthless. This rainbow-tinted reflection of our own society—or glimpse into a frightening future—is a novel you won’t want to miss.